Seneca College

Easter Island

On Easter Sunday, 1722, Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen came across a small island in the Pacific Ocean with about 2000-3000 inhabitants. Considering the date, he named the Island “Easter Island”, but its local name is Rapa Nui.

The Rapa Nui population of Easter Island was already in decline at this point, and continued to decline further until an all time low of just over a hundred people in 1877.

A classic theory that explains the population decline involves the massive statues found all over the island. The Easter Island heads, or moai, were carved from volcanic stone between approximately the year 1100 and 1650. This coincides with the time during which, according to paleobotanists, Easter Island went from being heavily forested to completely treeless, which led to the idea that the population used up all the trees in carving and transporting these giant statues. Thanks to this theory, the historic…